Ohio in this year's election could be the Florida of 2000

If a close race demands a recount in Ohio, “conditions are ripe for a repeat of the delays, confusion, and chaos that racked Florida in 2000.”

So argues this piece from National Journal, which says part of the reason is that swing states such as Ohio “haven't adopted some of the reforms that Florida enacted after its infamous recount.”

There are many potential problems that could arise in a close race in Ohio, but the most obvious involve provisional ballots — those cast if a voter's eligibility is in question.

From the National Journal story:

Election officials don't count provisional or absentee ballots until 10 days after Election Day. In case of a narrow margin and with hundreds of thousands of such votes still to be counted, neither candidate could claim victory. (Ohio recorded 200,000 provisional ballots in 2008, a number expected to rise this time.) “Everyone is going to be saying, 'It's just like Florida,' ” says Trevor Potter, who was general counsel for John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.

Both campaigns are also girding for a fight over which provisional ballots will ultimately be deemed valid. And, here again, there is uncertainty. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit this week ruled in favor of Ohio's secretary of state, a Republican, who had ordered that provisional ballots cast at the wrong location would not be counted. A lower court had overturned the secretary's decision earlier this month. Challengers could appeal the Appellate Court ruling to the Supreme Court on an expedited basis, which would draw yet another comparison to 12 years ago.

Another potential problem, according to this story from American Lawyer, is that under a little-noticed provision of Ohio law, “federal election results cannot be challenged in state court.”

The provision is relatively new.

“Before 2006, legal challenges to the results of any statewide or federal race went to the state Supreme Court first under a statutory procedure,” the magazine says. “But early that year, Ohio legislators passed a law prohibiting federal election results from being contested under state law. Such challenges must now be brought under federal law.”

What's not clear, American Lawyer says, is how that would work.

"There is no federal statutory law that creates the same sort of election contest as under Ohio law," Prof. Steven Heufner of Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law tells the publication.

For instance, he says a plaintiff might bring an equal protection claim in federal court, though there does not appear to be a precedent for pursuing such a claim.

The Wall Street Journal notes that Ohio will conduct an automatic recount if the final margin is 0.5% or less.

“Absentee ballots in Ohio have to be postmarked by Monday but can be received until Nov. 16,” the newspaper says. “That also is the deadline for voters to provide documentation to prove their provisional ballots should count. That means the winner of the state may not be apparent until after Thanksgiving.”

That could make for some interesting table talk on the holiday.

Tough times ahead

A lot of you will be disappointed by the results of the presidential election. But at least when it comes to job creation, there's a lot less at stake than you might imagine.

Divided government will blunt either candidate's agenda, TheAtlantic.com's Derek Thompson writes, and “global fundamentals will probably outweigh whatever they accomplish.”

“The U.S. today suffers from a jobs gap, a wage gap, and an innovation gap — and the president doesn't have much control over any of them right now,” Mr. Thompson argues.

Jobs are returning, slowly, and incomes are rising, slowly, but middle class salaries will continue to fall behind their historical rate of growth.

As he writes:

This wage gap isn't Obama's fault, and it wouldn't be a President Romney's fault, either. It's globalization, and automation, and rising health care costs, and labor's decline matching the fall of U.S. manufacturing, and a lot of other trends you have heard of, and are easily considered opaque, because they have no easy solution. … But some middle class problems are just ... problems. When multinational companies discover that American workers within a global supply chain are replaceable with cheaper workers around the globe, that's not the president's fault; it's just a part of global business.

Citing this piece by a Harvard business professor, Mr. Thompson concludes that the U.S. economy has, for the moment, “moved beyond 'empowering' innovations that create new scalable products that require more workers toward 'efficiency' innovations that make existing processes cheaper and easier — and replace workers. The fixation on efficiency isn't evil. It's not a function of bad governance. Instead … it's a stage of capitalism and a dilemma for capitalists.”

The film “follows four promising young sommeliers as they mount an all-out effort to attain the highest distinction in their field: the title of master sommelier,” the newspaper reports. “Standing between these men and that goal is a test so difficult that fewer than 5 percent of all candidates who have ever taken it have passed. It takes applicants an average of four attempts to pass.”

Mr. Wise tells The Times that when he first approached the Court of Master Sommeliers, the chief examining body for wine service professionals, headquartered in London, they were a little apprehensive.

“Imagine you are this prestigious organization that gets a lot of respect around the world, and are worried about your image,” he says. “And this first-time filmmaker from Cleveland, Ohio, comes up to you and says, 'I'm not a sommelier. In fact, I'm not in the wine industry at all, but I'd like to make my first movie about you guys and what you do.' ”